


At The Crossroads

by rthstewart



Series: The Stone Gryphon [10]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe-rthverse, Gen, Original Character(s), The Problem of Susan, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:22:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26068654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/pseuds/rthstewart
Summary: Susan has promises to keep and a wish that is finally granted.
Series: The Stone Gryphon [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/15017
Comments: 54
Kudos: 115
Collections: Narnia Fic Exchange 2020





	At The Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Syrena_of_the_lake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/gifts), [guardyanangel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/guardyanangel/gifts).



Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.  
-Saint Francis de Sales

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,  
But I have promises to keep,  
And miles to go before I sleep,  
And miles to go before I sleep.  
Excerpted from _Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening_ by Robert Frost

For Syrena_of_the_Lake and guardyanangel, Eva and a few others. 

* * *

Lights flickered and the train rattled and swayed. Susan picked at the grubby and frayed ticket she had vowed not to use. Conceding to her mounting anxiety, she glanced at her watch - a Swiss precision marvel of uncertain provenance Tebbitt had gifted her after the debacle in Helsinki last year.

"Seven minutes early," Asim said, knowing without the need to consult the timetable, his watch, or the countryside swiftly moving by outside the dingy window.

"We'll make it." Mary gently squeezed her arm and managed to make it feel more consoling than condescending or irritating.

_And then what?_

It would be a mad dash at the station but, perhaps, maybe, she would be able to stop Peter from dragging everyone into his misplaced, and heretical, heroics.

"I am just so sorry to pull you both into this," Susan replied. She had been making apologies and profusely thanking Mary and Asim since the three of them had conferred and settled on their course of action.

"All I want out of it is a trip down the Rabbit Hole. It seems only fair," Mary said with a sniff.

"I have asked," Susan replied, managing a smile at Mary's often repeated complaint. Over the years, Susan had come to like Mary better than most of her siblings' other lovers who had come before her. With Mary, Peter had matured in ways even beyond what Narnia had accomplished. But this whole, literal, nightmare, had brought to the fore his lingering dictatorial tendencies.

In his usual, unsparing way, Asim said, "This journey began for me long before you and your family were involved."

Asim had always been very effective in instructing a person on her own insignificance.

"We all have an interest in getting a restful night's sleep," Mary put in, stifling a yawn.

The nightmares plaguing everyone had, for the three of them, become bloodier, smoke-filled, and loud.

Susan felt the train begin a turn into a deep arc and heard a piercing whistle.

Asim braced himself against the seatback, leaned forward, and peered out the grimy window. "We're approaching the station. We should be slowing…"

What happened next, Susan would never be able to describe well. There was a bone-rattling jerk that threw her out of her seat. There was a deafening roar that was nothing like Aslan and a blast of heat and smoke.

She blinked. Her head was ringing and she _hurt_ , as badly as anything she'd ever felt before.

_What happened?_

She'd been on the train, rushing to stop her family and friends from catastrophe.

The train. That was it. In the War and everything since, she'd been blown out of things before - buildings, jeeps, trees, a trench. The train crashed.

Yet, this was different. 

There was an absolute stillness. There were no sounds at all, no screams or secondary explosions. Not typical in her experience of surviving such things. Nor was there any heat. She was usually trying to crawl away from a fire. No smell of burning wood, melting metal and glass, or burnt flesh.

_Perhaps I am dead? Was this Aslan's Country?_

She was inordinately irritated at the prospect. Wouldn't that be _just_ typical. And would that make Peter the winner in their argument? No, if Aslan brought them all home, that would demonstrate the soundness of her position that He could and would do so in His own time, not Peter's.

That made her feel a little better.

 _Why am I woolgathering at a crash?_ Shock, probably. _I'm in shock._ Susan concentrated on herself. _How am I? Where am I?_

The prickling in her back made her aware that she was lying on gravel. So that seemed, right. Had she been blown out of the train onto the embankment? She gingerly tested her limbs and found she could move, which meant she wasn't pinned or pierced. There was an itching trickle on her face, blood surely.

Susan pried open her eyes - both eyes - surprised that she could. There was a thick blanket of gray overhead, though, as her sluggish mind slowly absorbed it - without the cinders and ash that she would have expected. This wasn't smoke and a debris field from an explosion. This was fog lying heavily on the ground. Yet, it had been a clear day. Had they suddenly hit a fog bank and that had caused the crash?

Easy steps first.

She rolled over and, as the gravel pricked painfully into her hands, she gritted her teeth and pulled herself up. Her blouse and trousers were badly torn - scratches but nothing very deep. Gingerly probing her head, she found the cut on her temple. It would probably be another scar make-up would have to cover.

She looked about and, from a very great distance, saw a ferociously twisted pile of wreckage - the length of a train turned over on its side, smoke and fire billowing out of shattered windows. Train cars had cracked apart and bodies, both still and writhing, were tossed about like twisted driftwood at the seaside. The front of the train looked to have smashed into the platform and the station was ablaze.

_My family and dearest friends are there._

But how did she get _there_? _Could_ she get there? It was as if she was looking through a pair of high-powered binoculars, distorted, and from a very long way away. She could see nothing else through the mist except the crash in this peculiar mix of real and not-real.

"Am I dead?"

"No," said a voice, so heart-achingly beautiful and so deeply missed, Susan sobbed.

"Lambert?" She looked about frantically, trying to track the only sound in the profound stillness.

"Yes, my Queen."

The mist parted and the great gray Wolf loped to her.

Susan opened her arms. "Lambert!" Her beloved Guard, dead a millennia, flew into her embrace. She buried her face into his neck, threw her aching arms around his great shoulders and inhaled the musky odor of her dearest companion.

She did not know how long she knelt there, weeping into his thick fur. When she finally was able to pull away, there was a smear of blood where her head had been. She tried to wipe it away but the only effect was that her hand was now damp with her tears, tacky from the blood, and covered in Wolf hair.

"I don't have a handkerchief," Lambert said.

"No? You do not keep one in your ruff?" It was an old joke between them. "Am I dead?"

"No," Lambert replied. "But others are in the catastrophe you see. Aslan is reaching into your world and bringing them to him. There is a door now, for a short while. I walked through it so that I might see you."

"Who has died?" It hurt, even here in this in-between place. It would hurt more when she returned.

"Aslan would say…"

She nudged Lambert in the shoulder. "I know what He would say. Don't _you_ dare."

"Aslan would say that is not my story to tell," Lambert continued, with a dry tone of irony she could not mistake. "However, these are all parts of a greater story that we all share in."

That was better.

"Lambert, what about Lucy, and Edmund and Peter?" She wrapped one arm around the Wolf again and nuzzled closer to him. "When Peter and I last spoke, it was very angry. Is that how this will end? To never be able to make that right with him?"

"And to demonstrate to him that you were correct and that he was wrong?"

She huffed a little laugh but it hurt too much. They had probably all been on the train or on the platform now burning up in the distance. Eustace and Jill were in this twisted wreck somewhere. Maybe also her parents who had also been traveling today. And Polly would have thrown herself into this and probably the Professor as well. And what of Asim and Mary? The tears were falling again and she rubbed her face into Lambert's fur.

"I do not know all who died, my Queen, but they are many, including your brothers and sister. Aslan has given them all the choice, to remain with him or to return here."

"Oh."

Over the last weeks, she had thought often of the Tarot card that Agnes had drawn for her so long ago, the Three of Swords, a heart pierced by three swords. And here it was. Why would Peter, Lucy and Edmund return to this hard life and a train wreck given the choice? She knew full well all that her siblings had left behind. 

"Lucy could be with Aslan again." And Aidan, Briony, Tumnus and so many others her sister dearly missed. "Peter is still looking for the purpose he had in Narnia. He has never found someone to fill the hole Dalia left." Mary might have done that, if they could have both broken from the past. She choked on a little, bitter laugh. "And, Lambert, I can see no circumstance under which Morgan would let Edmund come back here."

Morgan's possessiveness and capability for revenge were finely honed. The candlestick she had lobbed at Aslan had a special place on the mantle at home; Mother polished it every week with an intensity Susan did not fully understand.

"I cannot say," Lambert replied. "These decisions are their own. Though, for Banker Morgan's part, she lived a long life after you left and achieved great success for Narnia She might be very angry at Aslan for _again_ depriving King Edmund of the same opportunity."

Susan did not know what to make of this. "So you have come to know Banker Morgan over the last one thousand years, my Friend?"

"I have." Lambert answered so gravely, Susan knew humour would follow. "Her aim has much improved and she will throw candlesticks at Aslan on my behalf."

Her giggle had an edge of hysteria. "Why would they ever come back, Lambert?" She would be so alone.

He turned his head and nosed her shoulder. "Their love for you is as great as yours for them. But this time, Aslan has given them the choice and has charged me with giving you the same."

Gasping, she raised her head to look at Lambert, though always without the direct eye contact that was a show of dominance. "Truly?"

"Yes, my Queen. You may return with me, or go back to your world."

This felt _worse._

_Go back to a train wreck and the corpses of the people I love most in the world, knowing they chose death over life. Over me._

She again buried herself in the comfort of Lambert's solid presence. Sobbing eased the pressure in her chest. But having the choice and the opportunity to say the things that needed to be said did not make the only possible decision any easier. She'd been walking this path since the day she had seen Aslan's summons in the coat of arms for the United Kingdom. Earlier, even, for it was Narnia that had shaped her to do what she was called to do here. 

"I'm sorry, Lambert, but I have to go back. I have so much still to do. There are terrible things happening in my world I cannot just..."

Lambert pushed his nose at her, stifling her babble about the rising tide of communism, the mass deportations in the Soviet Union, Stalin, the atomic bomb. She and Tebbitt had been chasing leads on a double agent in British intelligence passing documents to the KGB. She could not leave this work unfinished and badly done.

"I know, Queen Susan," Lambert injected

"Lambert, I think the Iron Curtain is a little beyond your ken." She could not wholly stop the bitterness and felt awful immediately after. "Forgive me, Friend. I should not have spoken so."

Though Lambert rested his great head on her shoulders, a weight seem to lift. "My Queen, on the day of your Return, I spoke long with Aslan. He sang me a song of your story, of the lives you will save, the things that will be better because you are here to do them, of the love and joy that you shall find, and of the recognition and honour you shall receive that you never had even in Narnia."

Susan did perk at the word "honour." That likely meant only one thing. "A knighthood?," she asked hopefully. "Truly?" She rather liked the thought of _Dame Commander Susan Pevensie_.

"That and more," Lambert replied. "For my part, I have waited a very long time and can wait a little longer so that you might complete your work here and come home to me only when you are satisfied with it."

"Thank you, Lambert." She shifted from her crouch on the ground and brought her hand not wrapped around Lambert into the throat of her blouse and pulled out the chain and the pendant hanging from it. "See this?" she told her Guard. "It's a carving of you, made for me by a dear friend. I am never without it."

Lambert wagged his tail and sniffed the little wooden carving of the gray dog Guy Hill had carved for her before he died. The paint had worn off and the edges were softened from wear.

"I shall tell Guy Hill you carry it still when I return."

She wrapped both her arms around the Wolf again. "I knew you would be great friends."

A siren suddenly burst through the quiet. Susan turned about and the wreck that had seemed so distant before was now close. She could feel the heat of fire and a light ash was falling, like a gray snow.

She embraced Lambert once more, feeling her heart ease for the parting words they had both needed to say and never had. "Until we meet again, Lambert. You are always with me."

"And I with you, my Queen. Farewell, for now."

She rose. Lambert shook himself and she laughed for she would be returning to a disaster scene covered in Wolf hair. Lambert began walking away from her, head up, not looking back, his tail wagging mightily.

Susan heard a beloved voice, no, voices, call her name. She waved and called back, and as Lambert disappeared into the fog, others, as well loved, ran to meet her.

* * *

Aslan singing Susan's song to Lambert is taken from [Chapter 4](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3773578/chapters/8386591) of Syrena_of_the_Lake's The Last Test and Proof.


End file.
